Deemed "untreatable."

[anthony]

Nearly all of the 50 therapists I've seen have told me that BPD is not "curable" and very resistant to any kind of treatment. When I was hospitalized some years ago, the therapists at the facility told me that BPD really could not be helped, that any gains I would make would be marginal, and that most therapists refuse to treat Borderlines because they are too difficult.

Yes, some of that is true, however; DBT has been quite effective with BPD over a year to two year period, showing quite astounding results. This is not new therapy, and has been around a long time now... the results have been within the past couple of years, verified equivocally via studies.

Most with BPD aren't as active as you are, thus they aren't as motivated either. What you do shows motivation, thus maybe you should look further into DBT for your BPD, rather than trying to treat PTSD with BPD, which just won't work, and you're seeing that for yourself already. You must treat BPD first... and it can be treated today, it just takes a good amount of work to do it, but it can be done and with high success rates.

 

[billie]

Hi Animal, sorry to hear of your hard time. Would it make a difference to you if you looked into the neurological science of Groundng, CBT, etc..... I mean no disrespect and I have no idea of your knowledge. The search engines you could use are pubmed, web of knowledge. I hope I havent come across rude as I'm not sure what else to suggest. Good luck and dont give up; animal liberation = human liberation ;)

 

[Abstract]

Ok. I am out as I don't think this is getting anywhere. I should have done so way back.

Sadly I do think you are presently untreatable and will be untreatable until you can change your thinking patterns.

Grounding is not about feeling good and all treatment is about being able to process trauma and surviving it, and surviving without being re traumatised.

I would ask yourself what you get out of blocking people in the way you do. You remain outwardly polite but dismissing everything others say can be a form of passive aggression. Consider if you get some satisfaction from your communication here.

 

[rainy_daze]

Is it really a question of 'sides'?

Yeah, I think everyone is on the same team. No one is choosing a side, there are no sides, we're not kids in a playground, right?

"keep makeing arguments for your limitations and surely they become yours!"

I've stolen that for my profile page CrazyHorse, I like that a lot.

I spent last night reading several articles about SE really hoping that I'd understand it better

Can you spend some time discussing all this with your T? Explain that you don't understand it.

Nearly all of the 50 therapists I've seen have told me that BPD is not "curable" and very resistant to any kind of treatment

These are the 50 therapists you don't trust. The ones that didn't manage to prove they were scientifically viable to treat you, in your opinion. I'm just saying. They've attempted to treat you (yes?), but you've explained how their methods haven't worked. Is that because they told you BPD wasn't curable, and you want very much to be "cured" and better, but because they said that now you think you are untreatable - whether it is PTSD or BPD or both? I personally don't think you're untreatable. It seems like the wrong attitude to have towards yourself. I've probably been guilty of this in the past, thinking I will never ever get better, but that is when the symptoms were over riding my logic, and logic says I will get better if I actually do the work, and accept whatever help and support to get better that I can find. While also doing my own self-help. While also getting support from people here. I also learned things from this thread. Healing is a learning process.

I have PTSD from complex trauma, and Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, or whatever it has changed to now. But I'm so much more than only the labels. I have had to learn and accept that I dissociate. It took some time, let me tell you, it really did. Once I accepted it all, and understood it, and started to trust that my T wasn't going to go and tell the world I was abused, that helped. I can ask her lots of things I don't understand about myself and share my confusion of the past with her. It works for me. I hope one day I can actually say aloud all my abusive memories, but I need to know I have the coping skills necessary. It takes time and work, and I'm still very much in the middle of trying things. As Abstract said

Grounding is not about feeling good and all treatment is about being able to process trauma and surviving it, and surviving without being re traumatised.

It took me a long time to even understand "stressor" and "trigger", that was how messed up I was. I can see that now. Sometimes the learning falls into place, it clicks and your life or the way you act or think makes sense, and it's another step to healing properly.

I hope you find what you need to get well.

I wish you all the best in your journey @Animalliberator .

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

@Animalliberator I think that becasue you are here, discussing what you are feeling and experiencing makes you 'treatable'. A truly untreatable person wouldn't be on this forum, working out this issue with strangers. I should also point out that after 5 pages of discussions and you are still here, calming talking about it, then you are obliviously willing at some level...

 

[Venusian]

I respectfully disagree with you about grounding. I've tried it for years and I've come to the conclusion that it is a crutch used to distract - much like addictions are used to distract. Grounding isn't dealing with issues. It is a temporary escape that provides no long term or lasting relief.

I agree with this point, grounding isn't dealing with the issues. Grounding is calming our fears and lowering our anxiety and brings us back to the here and now so that we can look at the situation more clearly. It allows us to respond to the actual situation and not what the emotions and memories that spring instantly to mind from the trigger that caused the flashback or anxiety. Knowing we need to ground ourselves and when we need to ground ourselves can give us a marker to identify a situation that we can look at and see how it impacts us. Knowing that, we can then start to get to the root cause of our issues. How our past impacts on our current life.

 

[Animalliberator]

This all seems hopeless. I feel like I'm on a completely different planet than those on this forum. Grounding, SE, mindfulness, energy - it's all gobbledygook to me. When I've tried grounding it just feels contrived and silly. And I would argue that my daily activities - rock climbing, snowboarding, yoga, working out - are all forms of grounding. They are distractions, escapes. And NONE has provided me with any relief over the long term. I even used to sky dive hoping it would jolt me out of this condition.

Grounding may work for some of you. I'm happy for you. But when I try grounding it just gets me angry. It feels like such a silly and utterly useless exercise. And grounding has a lot of hippy elements to it that seem laughable to me. One therapist wanted me to think of myself in a protected egg! Another suggested Buddhist meditation (this, for someone like me who's mind never shuts off and who has no belief in spirituality. Again, those kind of suggestions just get me angry.) And mindfulness work - as I noted previously - caused my body to convulse.

I don't want to be the tough case. I do want to heal. But I can't force myself to buy into theories that don't work for me, that sound so woo woo, and require blind faith.

Grounding is just another gimmick in the tool chest therapists use to fool people into thinking they are improving. They could just as easily suggest one pray to a squash. It's all power of suggestion and placebo effect. There is really no credibility in it.

 

[ill]

I may be wrong here, but I thought grounding was kind of the opposite of a distraction or escape. I think it and SE and mindfulness and energy work are all about learning to be present in the moment instead of trying to escape or distract oneself from it.

So are you getting angry because it feels like it's silly and useless to you? Are there any other reasons that it makes you angry? Does it make you angry to be in the present moment with no distractions? If so, do you know why?

Who really cares if it's gobbledygook? I think it matters less why something works than that it works. You don't have to know exactly how something works in order for it to work or to build trust or make a leap of faith in treatment. We all have to do that. It's part of the whole process. In order to know whether or not we can actually trust a person, we first have to trust them. We have to make a leap of faith and believe in the possibility by acting it out. All of us have had to do it, and it sucks and it's hard but if we want to make progress, we have to do it.

You don't even need to buy in. You don't have to believe it wholesale. You just have to stop actively undermining treatment/yourself by at least stopping the constant negative self-talk about therapy, treatment, your "untreatableness", etc. You just have to go in open to the possibility that something might work and then you have to try it out. It may or may not work for you. Sucks, but it happens. Then you move onto the next thing, again with an open mind and attitude, doing your very best. That's what we all do.

Grounding is just another gimmick in the tool chest therapists use to fool people into thinking they are improving. They could just as easily suggest one pray to a squash. It's all power of suggestion and placebo effect. There is really no credibility in it.

This quote right here is one of the reasons you've encountered as much anger and frustration as you have. Just because you don't understand something and/or it doesn't work for you doesn't mean that it doesn't work for someone else, and just because it does work for someone else doesn't mean they're foolish patsies. You're being pretty disrespectful. Your experience and understanding of it is just that - yours. Your opinion isn't an objective fact, but you keep wording your viewpoints as though they are the one and only truth. It's offensive and it makes it very difficult for people to converse with you, which many have done here, in good faith. People were willing to give you the benefit of the doubt - an act of trust, and something that I hope might rub off on you. Give treatments and therapists the benefit of the doubt. Don't just assume or decide they're not going to work, couldn't possible work, are nonsense, pointless or hopeless. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt too.

 

[ms spock]

Here Animaliberator,

This is a link to a DBT site. http://www.dbtselfhelp.com/

There are the studies that have been done showing it is amazingly effective with BPD.

I think this will satisfy your intellectual curiosity and also your logical mindset. You are obviously quite disciplined so you will manage the exercises with no problems.

 

[Animalliberator]

I've done research on DBT. Way too complicated.

Obviously, you all are on a different wavelength than I am.

 

[Tympre]

Animal,
I find the animosity towards you intimidating. I am a numbers person, very rational and logical. This causes me to rationailse my feelings and minimize them often in order to supress them and not face them. Do you do this since your so factual? I also agree that grounding can be seen as a escape, but it is in a good way. When dealing with trauma you need to take breaks to focus on here and now instead of back then. So to me I would agree that rock climbing could be a grounding as you are forced to focus on here and now, unfortunately I wonder at its ability to aid in addressing your trauma as it is so seperate. Maybe ask your therapist to go rock climbing and incorporate the two? I find my grounding in crochet. I feel the tension of the yarn, the texture, the position of stitch and focus to ensure this remains the same. I do not respond well to SE and agree that it seems as if people are talking in a foreign language. I feel silly when I atempt the basics of feet on ground, but I understand the concept is to allow you to move at ease inside your memories and trauma, which without the ability can be disastorous. My mother was BPD and never found a way to not be the victim, unfortunately. If you are BPD then I think that treating it is instrumental to any other treatment. As for having 50 therapists, well I have gone through around 20 to 30 in the last 7 years at least. Most I find are silly, quacky, pushy, to demanding and unrealisitc. I have one now I am working with that has earned my trust, but as my fear of being hurt is on the high side this month I have not made the last 2 apts. CBT aids me a little bit, but only in the most extreme situations, I think. I dont trust people at all, I find they are unpredicatble, mostly selfish and as such its incredibly hard for me to maintain trust even after I establish it.
Your posts echo alot of how I feel, except faith. I have a strong sense of faith, just not in anything outside of me hahaha. If you truely wish to face your trauma's which I think you do, then keep searching. I do not believe anyone is untreatable. I have heard that many times over in dealing with not only me, but one of my children as well. I have found its more a lack of understanding or expertise. If you have found a therapist you can trust and she works at your pace, stick with it! Its slow, very slow, like rock climbing, you must be evermindful of your steps lest you end up sliding or falling back down to the begining. As for suggestions on treating, well as I myself wrestle with my rationalizations and minimizing, I am hardly the person to suggest much of anything, but perhaps exposure therapy? If you know what you are afraid of, and can be exposed gently. I believe you said it all about your treatment, when you said this therapist did not push you, but instead let you work through at your own pace. Perhaps you move slower like I do, testing each step and researching every 'rock' before applying your weight. If this is true, then you can be treated and are treatable, its just going to take a long time, and you will need gentle pushes if you are as reluctant as me to face it(whatever it is).

 

[Lady of Longbourn]

@Animalliberator It would help if you are a little bit less argumentative and more open minded. I understand with your history of trying to find help it will be hard but you wont get the help you need without listening a little bit.